


Silence in between

by Inkfire



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Dark Days, Depressing, Drabble, F/M, POV TARDIS, Pre Episode: s07e06 The Snowmen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-23
Updated: 2013-06-23
Packaged: 2017-12-15 15:15:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/851006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inkfire/pseuds/Inkfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the dark days, he digs deep into himself and curls into the hollow cavern of his ship, exploring the labyrinth of loss, mourning her and them. The TARDIS stands, vacant and wide, his guardian—his vessel, eternal. /An angsty pre-Snowmen drabble, TARDIS POV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silence in between

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elisi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elisi/gifts).



> Finally, the last one of my drabbles. Dedicated to elisi, whose wonderful post-finale meta, evoking widower!Doctor, inspired this—or rather, set the atmosphere. The very much depressing atmosphere, I'm afraid. My Doctor, I like him broken quite a bit. *hearts*
> 
> Also, TARDIS' POV. I do believe that's a first for me.
> 
> The title comes from a line from the gorgeous song _No Light, No Light_ by Florence and the Machine (" _You are the hole in my head / You are the space in my bed / You are the silence in between / What I thought and what I said._ ") That line seemed quite fitting of those two and that stage of their relationship.
> 
> Enjoy!

When he returns, wordless, from Darillium and the bitter end of a story long begun, the TARDIS in homage flashes quiet lights and turns to robes of dismal blue, cool and frigid as a hollow core.

He rests his weary angles in the ones she unfolds around him. A shell she becomes, the emptiness heavier than anything full and blooming—reach to knock, and the echo will ring, loud and harsh and deep, crying out with the life of what once was, and never more. Never is not a concept her wide consciousness easily provides, for what existed always will, always would have. She always has a child, the idea of her folded away, safe. Never is a word that covers nothing, a mere shadow, the cloak pain dons: time travel is the wound of the ever-present, each action leaving its scar through hearts and through the universe. He would know. Still he breathes _never_ like it shapes him, like one of the big, complicated words, and she humours him.

When has she not?

(Always. Guiding him, pulling him, stealing him—just this once, she lets him rest, in mourning.)

Grief settles over him, feasts and festers, turning him into a cold, aching surface, with a core of shadows. Echoes answer echoes into songs that end in screams, and he doesn't cry out with them, doesn't rebel, attempt to smash or fix. He sits for hours, quiet on the floor, tasting what it's like to feel life trickling away, to turn dry and empty and hollow, transparent. Anything left is a shadow. He hosts a city of shadows, that whisper, places and faces flashing beneath his eyelids whenever those dare to drift shut and hope— _profanely_ —for rest.

He doesn't cry. He, occasionally, says her parents' name, leaving hers always unsaid, the void private.

The universe doesn't see. The universe hardly cares.

Love is always lost in the end, he knew, and still reached out and got burnt.

It doesn't burn now, not quite and he wishes it would—she knows. The Doctor learns winter, standing thin, blackened and bare. He calls it the dark days, never mentions the nights. The nights are worst. She leaves the lights on, breaking the easy cycle she'd always set for the convenience of humanity. Still he feels them pass, each one of them a promise he kept and keeps.

His nights are between him and her.

Echoes are everywhere. He holds onto them like splinters of glass planted in his fingers, throwing flashes of reflections, digging mercilessly into the flesh. Echoes are what make him—he thinks he has become a box of his own, bigger on an inside that is an ever-expanding land, acres of new, vacant space growing for the memories.

The living attempt to pull him out into their world. He stubbornly refuses.

One day, another echo steps in, a clear ringing that holds a promise of the yet unknown.

Despite himself, he looks up.


End file.
